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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3516 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 18, 2023

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As I recall James Cameron's (steel) sub was designed to shrink a few inches when it got to the bottom of the Mariana Trench -- granted this is something like three times deeper than the Titanic wreckage, but it sounds like a really bad environment for carbon fibre fatigue.

The only thing inaccurate about the scene in Down Periscope where the guy stretches a string across the engine room, and it sags as they dive? He states that you wouldn't see it on a nuclear sub, which is wrong. I'm pretty sure every submarine is designed to compress under water pressure, and combat subs don't dive nearly as deep as exploratory subs.

Yeah -- CF is bad in compression generally and (in my non-materials engineer opinion) probably especially bad when it's evenly compressed around the whole surface. (and then decompressed whenever it surfaces, of course)

I could imagine ways to overcome this (laying up the fibre under pressure?) but it seems very process dependent -- "Trust in Steel" OTOH is time-honoured.

Is there even any downside to using a giant steel ball for a submarine pressure hull? You're not paying to shoot it into space, you literally just want it to sink. I know the Soviets used titanium, but they did a lot of crazy stuff.

I mean you do kind of want it to be able to float at times rather than just staying on the bottom forever. But yeah, I think steel is pretty good. Corrosion would be a thing to watch out for I guess, but there are pretty well known ways of doing that.

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